Page:Portland, Oregon, its History and Builders volume 1.djvu/320

 Others who held donation claims were Gideon Tibbetts and Clinton Kelly. To the north were the Wheeler and Irving claims, and to the south the Long claim. East Portland then had no name as a town. Years were to elapse before a beginning was made of clearing the site. The road towards Oregon City, after reaching the high ground, threaded the darkest and thickest of forests. With the exception of the small spot on the west side, that had been partially cleared — though logs and stumps everywhere abounded—the whole site of the present city was covered with 'the continuous woods where rolled the Oregon.' So dense was the forest, so impervious to the sun, so cool the shades, that the mudholes in such roads as had been opened, scarcely dried the summer long.

A flatboat was maintained for a ferry at Stark street, with a skiff that would carry a single passenger, or two or three, which was used when there were no teams to cross. The east side, as we now call it, furnished little traffic for the ferry. Most of it came from Oregon City and beyond.

The purpose of the youthful traveler in coming from Puget Sound, was to go to Forest Grove to school. But he first had occasion to go to the southern part of Clackamas county, and afterwards to Lafayette, in Yamhill. Thence to Forest Grove. The various stages of the journey were made on foot, after the manner of the time. The baggage was so light that it didn't get the Roman name of impedimentum. It was a single small satchel. President Marsh was the university at Forest Grove, and Judge Shattuck the academy. Both, of course, were men of all work, not only in school, but at home. Most students—there were not very many—'boarded themselves.' A dollar a week was supposed to be money enough; two dollars, luxurious living.

At that time there was no school at Puget Sound, except a small private school at Olympia, kept by Rev. George F. Whitworth, pioneer missionary, who still lives at Seattle, and not long ago was at Portland. His school was a mixed school, in which only primary instruction was given, for there was no demand for higher. In Washington the public school had not begun; in Oregon it was making here and there its earliest start.

In October, fifty-four years ago, the weather was fine as now. The early rains had washed the smoky dust out of the atmosphere, and the woods were fresh and clean, untouched by frost. The cheerful spirits of the young and lonely traveler, who was on his way from Puget Sound that week, and who was, so far as he knows, the only passenger on the road, put nature also in her cheerfulest mood; for whether we find nature kind and genial, or harsh and sour, depends on ourselves. No stream was an obstacle; for, though there were no bridges, one had but to strip and wade or swim, carrying his clothes in a close pack on his shoulders, or pushing them ahead of him on a float. Sometimes, on reaching a small stream, one would take the trouble to look for a foot log, over which he might pass, but not often, for the dense undergrowth along the stream hid everything, and it was often impossible to break through it. Besides, to wade or swim was nothing. All young fellows took it as a matter of course. On the Chehalis, on the Newaukum, on the Cowlitz, there was no place where you could get an outlook—not an even up and down the sinuous streams for any distance. The great trees and dense undergrowth shut out everything. Here and there a first settler was beginning his little clearing, but within a few years these first ones usually gave the effort up as hopeless. The clearing could come only with more powerful agencies that attended the railroad. At the Cowlitz farms was a prairie of some extent, that had long been occupied by the men of the Hudson's Bay Company. It was the only real nucleus of a settlement between Portland and Olympia—though here and there at long intervals were scattered habitations. Where the town of Chehalis now stands, a man named Saunders lived, at whose house most travelers stayed over night; and on the east fork of the Cowlitz, at its junction with the main stream, there was a settler named Gardiner, who, with his son, a boy of fifteen, lived the life of a hermit, yet would help on his way with fare